Tag: self awareness

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UIO’s Third Most Popular Podcast Featured with Top Tips

It’s the third week  of our campaign to share top tips from our most popular podcasts.  This week, we feature On Girls’ Rights with Lindsey Turnbull, a podcast that is all about exercising your rights to stay happy and healthy in the space you are in.  Though the teenage years can throw challenges at you, you have a right to meet those challenges in our own style.

Top tips include setting boundaries on and offline and honouring them. With boundaries, it is much easier to occupy a healthy space.  Following having clear and consistent boundaries is protecting your internet space. Not only does this mean, following positive accounts but it also means unfollowing negative ones.  Check out the vlog here!

And continue to watch this space for our new back to school mini-series out in mid-September.  The series features podcasts on how to stay safe at school during the COVID era, navigating the new norms and grief amongst other topics.  With a whole new world to before us, the podcasts offer loads of advice and tips on how to adjust and move forward. Take care!

 

 

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Planning for future you

Our latest podcast, On Personal Development, the last in our second series of UIO, the podcast for teen girls , got me reflecting upon my own personal journey thus far—the importance of gaining self-confidence and self-awareness early on in life, as well as finding role models.

And though I can’t pinpoint a place in time when suddenly I knew the importance of developing personally, I do remember how much I wanted to be a journalist as a teenager and what I did to get the show on the road, at least from a personal perspective. From reading the announcements at church as if reading the news on NBC to behaving like an investigative reporter when I truly had nothing to investigate, I took a rather naïve yet enthusiastic approach to pursuing my goals.

My family might recall that I always had a question for you no matter what the situation. How could they forget?

In my mind’s eye, all I had to do was hone my natural skills and for sure I would get whatever job I pursued. Peter Jennings, who dropped out of high school but still served as anchor of ABC World News Tonight from 1983 until his death in 2005, was doing so after all.

You see, though I was born in a different era, a different gender, a different race to Jennings, it never occurred to me that I might not have the same breaks, same opportunities that he had. And as it turned out I didn’t, but I did have the desire to pursue my dreams and the confidence to act. And while I didn’t end up on ABC, I have enjoyed some wonderful success as a journalist, a writer and now a podcaster but not without a challenge or two.

To this end, On Personal Development special guest Robyn Spens, a coach and rapid transformational therapist, points out that confidence is key, particularly when in an unfamiliar situation or facing challenges. Here, here to that.

I will never forget feeling as though I was going to drown during a re-branding project, which I was leading, as a major organisation’s interim communications director. And suddenly in a particularly confident moment, it hit me that I knew more than anyone else, even if I didn’t know everything. Thus, it was confidence that saw me through.

It really matters in developing one’s full potential, but it is not the only thing that matters. Robyn talks about the importance of nutrition and sleep, for example, something I am still getting my head around.

One thing that I have learned along the way is that personal development is for life, even if there are stages in life when some bits are more relevant than others. For example, when I first moved to New York, I knew very little about table etiquette. Sure, I knew the basics and had pretty good manners, but when I found myself at a posh event at Tavern On The Green, acting as publicist to the CEO of my organisation, things got really personal.

Since then, I have resorted to my investigative journalism skills. When in doubt find out. Check out On Personal Development for more hot tips from Robyn Spens.

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What Is Personal Development Anyway?

It’s Elizabeth and I’m delighted to once again be invited to guest blog on the UIO podcast page.

This week I will be talking about personal development, a topic that will be covered also in our upcoming podcast in December.

Personal development is an often used but rarely explained term. For me, the term refers to investing in myself so that I can manage myself effectively regardless of what life might bring my way. Personal development has allowed me to be proactive and rather than wait for good things to happen, I try to get out there as much as possible and make them happen.

An example of this was the time I was made redundant from a high profile role in I.T. while on maternity leave with my first child. Initially, I was devastated and didn’t have a clue what to do. What would we do for money? How would we pay the bills? Would anyone else want to employ me? Would I have to cut my precious maternity leave short? The worries seemed endless.

Fortunately, I had just read an article on personal development and as an already optimistic person whose ‘glass is always half full,’ I decided to take this situation as a positive, rather than a negative, opportunity and used the time to reflect personally about what it was I actually wanted to do with my life – possibly for the first time ever.

I decided I wanted to become self employed and do a role whereby I could not only earn enough financially, but also work around my baby and enjoy spending the cherished early years together. I then retrained to do exactly that. It hasn’t always been easy and I’ve had my fair share of struggles, but I haven’t looked back since. I now work around both my beloved children and I’m doing something I actually really enjoy.

Personal development therefore begins with self awareness– know who you are and be it!

As we approach the New Year, like most people, I use it as an opportunity to set my ‘New Year resolutions.’ In so doing, I feel it is just as important to have a plan to realise my goal, as it is to know what it is I actually want to achieve.

An example of this is my yearly quest to set about losing weight! More often than not, my good intentions only lasted until the end of January (if that sometimes!), as I never had a plan to help me achieve it. Simply stating “I will lose weight” isn’t going to get the job done! With this in mind, last year I devised a course of action and by mapping out details specifically, I actually achieved my goal.

Personal development therefore continues with having a plan – know what you want and go out and get it!

To conclude therefore, my journey to self awareness has led me to understand that personal development is about taking the time and, making the commitment, to invest in my greatest resource–me. I think that when I put effort into developing myself on a personal level, the rewards can be amazing. I may not always achieve my goal, but I genuinely feel that I am experiencing a richer and more rewarding life by committing to pursuing my own objectives.

So, don’t be put off because the results are not always the desired outcome but do remember that to achieve what you want in life is to know that the key to success lies in the ability to manage yourself in a variety of situations. That ability comes through making a commitment to personal development and I firmly believe that this is the first step on the path to personal fulfilment.